An Outdoor Education: Local Universities Embrace Natural Assets

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Have you ever dreamed about sea kayaking through the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin or doing a sunset paddle off Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula, but never had the equipment or the know-how to do it?

Maybe in winter you’ve considered sampling a little “snow kiting” … or frankly have never even heard of that before now.

You, my friend, need to go to college.

One of the under-tapped resources around the Lake Superior region is the outdoor recreational programs, open to students, staff and the general public, at our public and private universities.

I should know. For the past three years, I’ve been participating in outings with the University of Wisconsin-Superior and the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth.

Having grown up around canoeing, hiking and kayaking in the north woods, I love watching the wilderness wonder that comes over students on their inaugural exposure to the great outdoors. Regional universities, too, have long understood the thrill – and allure – of our natural assets.

“Just the thought of being able to go surfing on Lake Superior is often enough to draw prospective students to the area,” says Pat Kohlin, coordinator of sea kayaking at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

That’s true at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, too, says Harvey Lemelin, the acting director for the university’s School of Outdoor Recreation, Parks and Tourism. Most of Lakehead’s students come from outside the region. “We’re able to attract students from southern Ontario to the Thunder Bay region based on our outdoor recreational opportunities and our parks. Lake Superior is a big part of that attraction. Students also come up here for the amazing canoeing, kayaking, hiking and rock-climbing opportunities.”

Besides tapping the great outdoors in their marketing focuses, many regional colleges offer programs with equipment, experts and itineraries.

All of the various recreational programs provide awe-inspiring, accessible ways to sample nature. Several continue year-round, and some offer to work with private businesses or organizations to design a customized event focusing on relationship and team building.

Lucas Will, now the Outdoor Orientation coordinator at Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, took advantage of UMD’s outdoor programming while a student there. He appreciated the rewards of participating in college adventure trips. “Talk about life experiences! When I graduated, I felt more capable of doing what I was going to do in life because of what I had done extracurricularly. … The main reason we do what we do … is to get people outside, to see that outdoor classroom, how valuable it is and how much the outdoors can be a metaphor for challenges in life.”

Foremost, these programs help students to learn, relax, develop camaraderie and build confidence. Students are in college to learn, after all, and these outdoor experiences are big on self-discovery. The nice thing is that you can basically just pick your pleasure – camping, sea-kayaking, backpacking, cross-country skiing and horseback riding just scratch the surface of options. Activities might last a couple hours or may continue several days.

“It’s very neat to watch all the students grow and develop as people, especially the students who have no idea what they’re actually getting into at first,” says Nathan Field, acting director of campus recreation at the UWS. “We’ve watched them discover things about themselves that they might not have seen before. It’s an opportunity for them to dig in a little deeper and get pushed a little further out of their comfort zone.”

These college-based programs offer great advantages for anyone wanting to sample a new recreation: the sessions often are geared toward beginners, the equipment is provided or reasonably rented and the sessions themselves are inexpensive. Schools may charge as little as $25 to join a three-day backpacking trip, just enough to cover food costs.

UWS Superior Adventures offers community paddles on Wednesday nights throughout the summer. The two-hour outings, set at places like the St. Louis River or off Wisconsin Point, include kayak rentals and a basic kayak skills lesson for just $10 dollars. Community members with their own boats can join the paddles for free.

A lot of the UMD programming is introductory, says Pat Kohlin, giving students and community members a chance to try new outdoor pursuits in a safe environment. Student service fees support the program, too, which helps to keep participant costs low.

The student fees at Michigan Tech actually cover free use of the university’s golf course, free skiing at Mont Ripley and free snowshoe rental, says Jared Johnson from the Outdoor Adventure Program.

Often the try-it outings cost nothing for Michigan Tech participants because if a person doesn’t like one activity, the staff wants him or her to try another without worrying about a new rental fee. “Maybe paddling isn’t something for them, but biking might be,” Jared says. When students find recreations they like, they might be encouraged to purchase equipment from local outfitters, which promotes those local businesses, too.

Part of the cost savings comes because many of the adventures can take place in our Big Lake backyard.

“We basically walk out our back door, and we’re in the Apostle Islands or we’re ice climbing in West Duluth,” says Nathan of UWS. “It’s been great for us to be able to connect students to the outdoors and say, ‘We don’t have to go very far, we’re right here for you.”

A few of the outings do take students farther away. Michigan Tech, for example, offers active alternatives to the drinking and partying of Adventure Spring Break. This spring students could either join up to hike, ski, snowshoe, ice skate and climb in Yosemite Valley, California, or swim, snorkel, go-kart, kayak, cave spelunk and hike on the way to Orange Beach, Alabama.

For now, those are student-only trips, Jared says, but some may open to the public in the future just like most of the local programming.

“Taking a break,” whether a weeklong spring outing or a few hours on a Saturday, provides the psychological and physical benefits of time spent outdoors in our over-worked age, Pat says. “Students need an outlet, because school is tough. Being physically active is probably one of the best outlets available to students to re-energize. There’s study upon study showing that exercise is good for the brain.”

A pre-finals backpacking trip that I brought my UWS students on this spring along the ups and downs of the Superior Hiking Trail from Gooseberry Falls to Wolf Rock got them out of block dorms and into dome tents, out of barren computer labs and along flowering riverbanks.

“I always thought that America was big cities and buildings,” Fiorella Luna, a freshman from Peru, said after that trip. “But after being in that forest, I realized that it was more than that.”

The other brain benefit of outdoor recreation outings is social engagement.

Some of the groups I’ve joined had several students who were already friends, but I’ve also seen strangers develop friendships while pitching tents or paddling cold waters.

Melina Avinon, a St. Scholastica student from Argentina, says she became a guide for that college’s Outdoor Pursuit rock-climbing trips “because I get the opportunity to meet awesome new people and to learn how to be a good leader.”

For the activities I’ve been part of, I’ve noted a preponderance of foreign students, perhaps because they have no way to organize a trip on their own. Often their impression of the United States is formed by blockbuster movies or music videos from Los Angeles and New York. The outdoor trips open a totally different side of American life to them.

I remember one student from China who, while tackling the Superior Hiking Trail this spring, told me that he was in “the Tibet of the Midwest.”

“I had a student from Zimbabwe who discovered our trips only in his junior year,” recalls Shawn Olesewski, Outdoor Pursuit coordinator at CSS. “He decided to try it, and he liked the first one so much, he then took every single trip we offered right up to graduation.”

That kind of enthusiasm is not unusual.

On my recent overnight canoe-camping trip, UWS students from Brazil, Italy and Libya joined U.S. students. All were complete beginners, paddling through friendly rapids on the Namekagon River in Wisconsin. As soon as they got back to campus, they posted photos and wrote home about exploring Lake Superior and its environs. They were astounded that they went down this big river together, impressed that they could do it.

I love the thought that these outdoor programs, open to all people, can show everyone a different aspect of our region and give them new ways to enjoy it and love it as much as I do.

Outdoor Recreational Programs

Here is a roundup of university and college outdoor program options near Lake Superior and a sampler of what they offer.

College of St. Scholastica, Outdoor PURSUIT!, Duluth

Offers outdoor trips; gear rental; indoor climbing wall open to all; guide training for students; Student Outdoor Adventure Retreat (SOAR) program.

University of Minnesota Duluth, Recreational Sports Outdoor Program (RSOP)

Offers outdoor trips; gear rental; an indoor climbing wall; “Make & Takes” to make your own outdoor equipment; Freshman Outdoor Trips and the Transfer Student Outdoor Trip.

Northland College, Outpost, Outdoor Orientation, Ashland, Wisconsin

Offers gear rental; outdoor orientation program trip for first-year and transfer students.

University of Wisconsin-Superior, Superior Adventures

Offers outdoor trips; gear rental; indoor climbing wall; community paddles around the Twin Ports in summer; “Challenge Course” ropes course; Breakaway: Pre-Orientation Wilderness Trip.

Gogebic Community College, Mt. Zion Recreational Complex, Ironwood, Michigan

Owns/operates a winter recreational facility for skiing, tubing and snowboarding open to the public and free to GCC students and seniors 62+.

Michigan Technological University, Outdoor Adventure Program, Houghton, Michigan

Offers guided trips; student outdoor leadership training; gear rental; “Challenge Course” ropes course; clinics and seminars on outdoor skills; Spring Break trip for students only.

Lake Superior State University, Regional Outdoor Center, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Offers guided hiking and camping trips; recreational workshops; gear rental; indoor climbing wall.

Northern Michigan University, Outdoor Recreation Center (ORC), Marquette, Michigan

Offers Adventure Series guided trips; skill building workshops; gear rental; indoor climbing wall.

Christopher Pascone teaches English as a Second Language at UWS. He worked for 14 years in St. Petersburg, Russia, before moving to Duluth with his wife, Inna, and their daughters, Vanessa and Adriana.